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Thursday, November 20, 2014

Vatican City, 20 November 2014 (VIS) –
The Third World Congress of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities
began in Rome today. Organised by the Pontifical Council for the
Laity, the meeting is a response to the appeal for missionary
conversion launched by Pope Francis to all Christians in his
apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium.

The congress – the third of this type
following those held during the pontificates of St. John Paul II in
1998 and Benedict XVI in 2006 – will be attended by more than 300
members of lay associations from 40 countries, gathered to explore
the theme “The joy of the Gospel: a missionary joy”.

The congress was inaugurated by
Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the
Laity, who recalled the rich teaching of the last three pontiffs on
what St. John Paul II defined as “the new season of associations of
the faithful”. The cardinal emphasised that St. John Paul II
closely followed and guided the rapid development of ecclesial
movements and new communities, accompanying them with his clear and
enlightening words … and indicated a new phase in the life of new
charisms, which would necessarily have to follow their initial
flourish – the phase of ecclesial maturity”.

For Pope Benedict XVI, he continued,
“the multiple forms and the unity of charisms and ministries are
inseparable in the life of the Church. The Holy Spirit desires the
multiplicity of movements in the service of the single Body that is
the Church”.

Pope Francis well knows the reality of
ecclesial movements, insists that the new charisms “are not a
closed patrimony, consigned to a specific group to guard it; they are
rather gifts from the Spirit integrated into the ecclesial body,
attracted towards the centre that is Christ, from where they are
channeled into an evangelical impulse”.